// Mobile Photography (part.1) [ENG]

On
social networks, forums and other web sources I often read
denigrating or sarcastic comments about certain photos saying things
like: “it looks like it was taken with a mobile phone” or “I
could reproduce this one just by using my iPhone”.

Comments
like these ones comes from the misconception that photographs quality
depends on the photographic tool, always emphasizing technic matters
and explanations and forgetting the fact that a photograph is mainly
a message.

Milano, 2017

Why
do you think people like to use their smartphones to take their
everyday photos? The answer is obvious: it’s because they always
have it with them or, rather, they always have it in their hands!!

What
many of them don’t do, or just don’t know they can do it, is
raising the quality of their photos by simply starting to consider
their smartphone as a complete photographic tool instead of just
seeing it as a tool to take mere visual memos.

Parma,
2017

What
are the limits of this technology? Actually, it doesn’t have any,
apart from the impossibility to control the depth of field, which
actually only limits the range of compositional solutions and only in
some photo genres (also, there are some software solutions that can
help to simulate, more or less, this effect).

If
the shots taken with our smartphones, the ones taken with no much
thinking, often come out a little bad or have a low quality, the
fault lies with our laziness and lack of interest in taking the
correct measures before pushing the button (or tapping the display).
Indeed, we tend to consider the image produced with a mobile device
as a throwaway image and, consequently, we don’t give to it the
particular attention we give to the photos we take with that
beautiful and eye-catching “professional” camera that make us
feel like we are real photographers.

However,
have we ever carefully used our smartphone camera? I’m not talking
about the latest released technology or device costing 1,000 euros.
Devices costing around 180 euros can also offer a good performance,
if used with awareness and the support of the right software.

Montecchio
Emilia, 2017

The
great charm of the Mobile Photography lies in the fact that we can
have the camera, the camera obscura and the tool to publish the final
product in just one device: all-in-one.

Even
though the shooting options are not always very advanced, they can be
upgraded with the help of a great variety of apps (free or
chargeable) that can almost limitlessly widen our creative
possibilities.

Selfportrait - Parma 2017

For
example, in the Street Photography the smartphone, in addition to a
good photographic sense (that’s something essential and it’s
never included in any monthly plan for your phone or any offer coming
with your 10,000 euros worth camera), is a really interesting tool.

Since
in this genre the skill of being able to place the subjects in the
scene is the basic requirement, the possibility to conveniently frame
the subject and the scene with a big screen without being noticed
(how many people do we see doing that every day?) is a real blessing.

Parma, 2017

A
smartphone can do what every street photographer does intentionally
every time he/she takes a photo, because of the limits of its optical
system/sensor’s design and technology: smartphones use hyperfocal,
which is a combination of focal, diaphragm and manual focus allowing
the photographer to get sharpness in the whole field. For this
reason, we can shoot without worrying too much about what subject
will be in focus and what subject will not, because the scene will
always be well-defined at every level.

Autodromo Varano, 2017

So,
what else is to be considered? Everything. The choice of the moment,
the choice of the frame, the choice of the light, the choice of the
subject... everything you need to take a good photo.

A
mobile device is not really different from any other device. It’s
actually the user who should understand that he/she has a complete
photographic tool in his/her hands and has to use it with more
awareness.

As
in every product category, of course some products are better than
others. If we consider this point of view (which is the leading
element in choosing a model or another in the mobile device market
too), it looks strange to see how people can’t fully use their
device functions, even people who spend lots of money to buy the
latest products, especially considering how much they spend for
something that costs just as a small photographic set for amateurs.

This
first post about the Mobile Photography is just an introduction. In
the next week I’ll give more details about this phenomenon and
introduce options, authors and useful apps to take good photos with
our everyday companion.

The
photos included in this article have been taken with a Nexus5x and
post-produced with Snapseed.